None of this has Happened Before
by netgirly2k
Summary: Twenty five years after she'd been left sobbing on a beach in Norway Rose Tyler made a decision, she was going home. OT3 fic.


Twenty five years after she'd been left sobbing on a beach in Norway Rose Tyler looked up from her desk on the top floor of Torchwood tower and made a decision; she was going home. Twenty five years, a quarter of a century, defending a world that had never really been hers, a world that had taken her mother, father, husband and most of her friends from her.

When she said home, Rose didn't mean planet Earth in her own dimension, London, the Powell estate, the flat. There was no one there for her now. It wasn't a place she had in mind, it was a person.

There were no Time Lords in Rose's dimension, she'd double and triple checked, but there were beings that had powers possibly even greater than those of the Time Lords, beings that could move a person from one dimension to another without endangering the whole of causality. And if you spent long enough as the head of the Torchwood Institute quite a few of those beings were willing to do you a favour, especially if it got you out of their plane of reality and out of their hair.

---

Rose was surprised that the Doctor hadn't regenerated since she'd seen him last, hadn't changed at all actually, same skinny frame, same sticky-up hair, same glasses that he didn't actually need, same brown overcoat that looked like it had come from an Oxfam reject bin. The only thing that he'd changed was his suit which was now bright blue and clashed violently with his red trainers. He was also staring at Rose as though she'd just appeared out of thin air in the TARDIS console room, which to be entirely fair she had.

"Rose? Rose Tyler? No, no, no, no, no, no, no," he turned away from Rose and darted around the console, flipping switches and peering at readouts. "This isn't possible, I told you, travel between dimensions is impossible." 

"Yes, because you've never been wrong about anything, have you?" the voice sounded familiar but it couldn't be. 

"Captain Jack?" if the Doctor hadn't changed, Jack definitely had. He was standing on the far side of the console room, about as far from the Doctor as it was possible to be and still be in the same room. Physically he looked exactly as he had when Rose had last seen him, all black hair and chiselled features, it was his manner that was different. He stood with his hands shoved deep in his pockets regarding Rose coolly.

"The one and the only," in all the time Rose had known Jack all those years ago she didn't remember him ever speaking to her without smiling, even when they had been in mortal danger, now he was looking at her with distant and almost unfriendly eyes.

"Oh, this is incredible," the Doctor brought Rose's attention back to him, he did this by jabbing the sonic screwdriver repeatedly into her ribs.

"Ow, get off! This is a great welcome, this is."

"You're real," the Doctor whispered, shining the screwdrivers blue light into her eyes causing her wince and bat the object away. "You're really here!" he gave a whoop of delight and leapt into the air, grabbing Rose into a bear hug that nearly pulled her off her feet. He then pushed her away slightly holding her by the shoulders and looking closely at her.

"Bloody hell, how much time has passed for you? You look like your mother. Ow, ow, stop hitting me. Jack, make her stop hitting me."

Jack crossed the console room and reluctantly extended his arm to shake Rose's hand, "welcome back."

---

The TARDIS, like Jack, had changed to the point of being unrecognizable and all Rose could find where her bedroom had been was a room full of trainers. Probably for the best; she's not sure what use she would have for the child's belongings that might still be in the TARDIS. Instead she picked a new room, plain white with a double bed and a large wardrobe. She hadn't been able to bring anything of her life in the alternate dimension with her, so she'll start again, fill this room up from scratch.

"Rose," it was Jack, standing in the doorway looking at Rose sitting on her new bed. Rose waited for some innuendo, a hug, a flirtatious smile but none were forthcoming. "The Doctor said to tell you that we've landed, Barcelona apparently."

"City or planet?"

"Could be either, his driving hasn't improved in your absence."

"Just 'cause I managed to do the impossible by jumping from one dimension to another without bringing everything tumbling down into the void doesn't mean I can go expecting miracles."

"Can't have everything," a smile tugged at the corners of Jack's mouth. 

"Jack, time moves a bit differently in the other world, and a lot of time has passed for me. I was just wondering how much time's passed for you?"

"Three hundred and seventy eight years," Jack said in a deadpan.

"Wow, and I thought turning forty was tough," Rose laughed at her own joke, Jack didn't. "Better go and see where we are, then," Rose stood and took a step, surprised when Jack took a step back to avoid closing the distance between them.

"Jack?" 

"Yeah?"

"What's happened to you?" 

"All manner of things, Rose."

---

Barcelona had sunshine, it had beaches, it had dogs with no noses. And it had some pretty nasty giant ants who had their hearts set on killing the Doctor and Jack, apparently because they had beheaded the queen of the giant ants years back. You can't leave men unsupervised at all, can you?

The Doctor slammed the TARDIS doors open dragging the dead weight of Jack with him. Rose followed, looking in horror at the amount of blood pouring from the cavity in Jack's chest. The Doctor dropped Jack and dashed over to the console, grabbing instruments seemingly at random. Rose placed her fingers on Jack's neck searching for a pulse she knew wouldn't be there. She fought back memories of doing the same with Jake, with Pete, with Mickey. 

"Doctor," he ignored her, intent on what he was doing, "Doctor, he's got no pulse he's dead. Doctor–"

Rose started to move over to the Doctor when her wrist was caught in an icy grip, shocked, she looked down to find Jack's eyes open and boring into her.

"You did this to me."

Later the Doctor found her sitting in one of the rows of seats that overlooked the cricket pavilion, she'd been looking for the cloisters but the TARDIS wasn't co-operating.

"Are you alright?" 

"Did I really do that to Jack?"

"Sort of, not really, no. The TARDIS did it; she was just acting through you."

"I don't remember, it's like after it happened it all just fell out of my head." Rose plunged on before the Doctor could interrupt, "but I just left him, I never tried to find out what had happened, if he was OK."

"I left him too."

"You were regenerating, you were sick. I should have asked, I should have made you take me back." 

They sat in silence for a moment.

"Can he really never die?"

"It's TARDIS energy that's keeping him alive, he might die when she does. Or…" The Doctor trailed off.

"Or he might live on, survive everyone. The curse of the Time Lords, you told me that once. Oh, God, no wonder he hates me."

"Oh, he doesn't hate you," Rose raised an eyebrow at him, "okay, maybe he hates you a little bit, but he hates me a little bit too."

He picked up Rose's hand and guided it to his nose where she could feel a tiny kink in the bone, "feel that. I stopped off in Cardiff to refuel, opened the TARDIS doors and kapow, hell of a right hook, Captain Jack."

"He actually hit you?"

"Yeah, for the first decade or so I used to catch him kicking bits of the TARDIS. Still we're over it now, well mostly over it. I'm mostly over it, at least."

"I shouldn't have come back, maybe I should go."

"Back to the alternate world?"

"I can't."

"Yeah? I would have thought any force powerful enough to bring you here without cracking a whole in the universe could do it again no trouble."

"Everyone died, Doctor," Rose said without meeting his eyes.

"What?" his head snapped round to look at her.

"Everyone died, Pete, mum, Mickey, Jake. I've got no-one there."

"Sorry, I'm so sorry," he took Rose's hand and squeezed, "stay. Jack will be fine, I want you to stay."

---

Rose woke in her bedroom in the TARDIS, the room was starting to look a little less Spartan than it had when she'd first arrived. The shelves were now littered with historical trinkets, the wardrobe filled with trousers, jackets and scarves, some pilfered from the wardrobe room, some bought (or begged or stolen) from alien bazaars. She puttered about in the bathroom (which thankfully was exactly where it had been last night, it wasn't always) got dressed and considered sneaking into the secondary kitchen for a cup of coffee before braving the Doctor and Jack. She'd been getting on with Jack much better recently, ever since they'd spent forty eight hours in that Draconian cell waiting for the Doctor to come rescue them. But as Jack's relationship with Rose had warmed his relationship with the Doctor had chilled noticeably, with Jack making very pointed comments about someone named Martha Jones which caused the Doctor to thump the console with the mallet and threaten to drop Jack back in Cardiff. Honestly, sometimes they were worse than Pete and Jackie.

Rose took her bracing cup of coffee and headed for the console room, hoping that they'd materialised somewhere, maybe a bit of death defying adventure would distract the Doctor and Jack from their old married couple act.

She entered the console room, took a sip of her coffee, swallowed, and stared. Jack was standing braced against the console, shirt off, braces hanging down his legs. This was nothing Rose hadn't seen before; there had been a time when it had been difficult to keep Jack Harkness in clothes. It was the next bit that was new, the bit where it was the Doctor who had the half naked Jack pressed against the console and was kissing him quite intensely his skinny body thrust against Jack's broader one. The Doctor had one hand pressed against Jack's thigh, his other arm snaked around to the console, flicking off the switches that were being switched on by the pressure of Jack's body. Jack wrenched the Doctor's tie over his head and pushed his shirt down his shoulders, his jacket was already in amongst the puddle of clothes on the floor. Ah, there was that mole the Doctor was so proud of. It struck Rose suddenly how odd it was that she was staring at a mole when the Doctor's hands were tugging at Jack's belt, how odd it was that the Doctor and Jack, who hadn't been able to say a civil word to each other for weeks now looked as though they were about to happily shag against the TARDIS console. 

"Er, um, I'll go, sorry," Rose spluttered. 

"Rose!" the Doctor turned to face her, wearing just his trousers and a pair of converse, "um," he ran his fingers through his hair, which thanks to Jack was even more messed up than usual. "Aliens made us do it."

And Rose laughed, because it was such a ridiculous thing to say. Here she was fully dressed drinking a cup of coffee and staring at her two half naked shipmates who, in a ship that has more bedrooms than Rose has had hot dinners, have decided to shag in the console room and all any of them can think to say is Aliens made us do it.

Jack caught Rose's eye and laughed, the Doctor made a token attempt to look offended then laughed along with them.

"What are you waiting for, an engraved invitation?" Jack extended his hand to Rose over the Doctor's shoulder, grinning wolfishly, and looking for the first time like the Captain Jack Rose remembered from their previous travels.

Afterwards, when Rose had complained that she was too old to have sex on the metal grille that passed for the console room floor and the three of them had stumbled through the corridors to a bedroom that was full of possessions but didn't belong to any of them, Rose lay counting the freckles on the Doctor's chest while Jack had somehow managed to wrap himself around both of them.

"Well that was new," Rose commented.

"Really," said Jack, "in my expert opinion that didn't seem to be the first time you've done this." 

Rose tried to look haughty, something that was quite difficult when you were lying between two naked and quite smug men. 

"Who?" the Doctor demanded, doing a decent impression of someone who was scandalised.

Rose thought about hiding her head under the duvet, and then decided that would just be immature, "Mickey and Jake."

"Mickey Smith, how I underestimated you," the Doctor sounded impressed.

"Who's Jake?" Jack asked.

"Pretty boy soldier from the alternate universe," the Doctor answered, "You would have liked him."

"I bet I would have. Sounds like Rose did."

"And what about you two, been making a habit of this have you?"

"No," said the Doctor. 

"Yes," said Jack.

---

Sometimes it's like how it was before, when the Doctor was a big eared northerner, Jack was an intergalactic conman, Rose was a child and they were sure that they all liked one another even though they weren't sleeping together.

"So Ianto says 'Don't look her in the eye, you'll frighten her,' and I say 'I'll frighten her?!'"

"Hang on," Rose interrupted Jack's latest instalment of 101 things not to do with a live Pterodactyl, "How did you know it was a girl." 

"Trial and error," Jack said.

"As much as I enjoy hearing tales of Jack's misadventures in a basement," the Doctor said from where he was standing by the door to their cell, holding up the sonic screwdriver triumphantly, "I've got the cell door open."

Jack and Rose scrambled to their feet and the three of them legged it to the TARDIS before their captors could sacrifice them to their Sun God.

---

Sometimes Jack doesn't speak to either of them for days. Sometimes when they're naked and entangled in each others limbs he calls Rose the Bad Wolf and can't meet her eyes, or he looks at the Doctor and Rose out of the corner of his eye like if he takes his gaze off of them for a second they'll vanish.

Sometimes they have to career halfway across the galaxy mending the slowly unravelling strands of space and time because there was a point where the Doctor took this Lonely God business a bit seriously.

Sometimes people look at Rose, by this point approaching the wrong side of middle age, on the arms of two handsome younger men and comment that it's a hell of way to spend a midlife crisis. It's at times like this when Rose remembers that she's living with two immortals who'll be travelling the universe long after she's dead and buried.

---

But mostly it's fine.

The Doctor was amusing himself by licking Rose's navel making her giggle, an impressive feat as sexual frustration is not normally a terribly funny thing.

"Do you know, Jack," the Doctor stopped what he was doing and rested his chin on Rose's abdomen, "that Rose's sister was a Zeppelin pilot."

Jack didn't respond, he was far too busy kissing Rose's neck while one of his hands snaked down the Doctor's naked back. Whatever else you might say about Jack he did have a focus in these matters that you couldn't help but find admirable.

"I'd quite like to be a Zeppelin pilot; I think I'd make a good Zeppelin pilot."

"No, you wouldn't," said Rose.

"No, you wouldn't," mumbled Jack, eager to get events back on track.

"Yes, I– Aah. No, I wouldn't." Rose didn't know what Jack had just done but she was certainly grateful he'd done it.

---

And mostly things were fine. At least for a little while.


End file.
